Been running Ubuntu 12.04LTS for about 3 months, tried other Distros but none would work as well for me. Well, the other day, in order to help out a buddy who's a Windows 7 junkie I gave Ubuntu 10.04LTS a try just to see what a Non-Unity desktop environment would look like and it actually was pretty decent. Sooooooo, I wondered what'd look like the older Gnome 2 desktop but in a newer, up to date 64 bit package and someone pointed me to Linux Mint 15 MATE. Loaded it onto a USB and took it for a little test dirve, liked it so much I just got done loading it onto my laptop and getting it configured a bit and I actually like it a lot. I think I've found a viable Ubuntu 12.04LTS replacement. Way to go Mint.

I actually talked my buddy into downloading Mint 13 MATE to install on a non-pae Toshiba laptop that he has. I finally talked him into giving Ubuntu 10.04LTS a try(last non-pae for Ubuntu) and then after I installed Mint 15 MATE I liked it so much that I talked him into buring a copy of Mint 13 to DVD to do a Live test drive. I really want him to break his Windows 7 habit, he things it's the "end all, be all" of Operating Systems but then has to turn around and spend money each year on renewing his Norton Anti-Virus. If it was so good he'd not have to do all that,LOL. I think once he plays with Linux for a while and gets a feel for what it can do he might move at least one of his better machines over to Linux Mint. Anyway, day two and I'm still enjoying it.

I've tried KDE, LXDE and Xfce and didn't care for any of em'. MATE, on the other hand, is pretty sweet. Now I see what all the fuss was about over the Gnome 2 desktop when it went away, it's really easy to get around on, I like it. On a side note I just installed Wolfer 1.9.10 Zero on a very old Dell L866r that my daughter had just to see if I can get it to work and it actually does. Very sparse system specs, Pentium III 866MHz, 348MB of DDR-133 RAM, 10GB HDD but it actually works. I sent off for a USB/WiFi adapter just to get it hook up to the Interweb so I can do some updates and upgrades since I doubt that I could find a PCI card for WiFi for such an old system. Anyway, if I can get WiFi my grandson can at least use it to get online to look stuff up when he's doing homework or what have you. Linux is so awesome, don't think I'd ever go back to Mac OS X.

The nice thing about Mate is that it's based on a very mature desktop environment (Gnome 2) and it therefore implements a lot of "small details" that might be missing in other desktop environments. As you experiment with various distros, you generally run into some of these having been left out. Sometimes, it's irksome; sometimes you just wanna throw your computer out the window... One area that sometimes isn't as well implemented as it should be is "drag and drop", and being a developer (especially one who likes to automate a lot of stuff), I have little use for a desktop environment that doesn't fully implement something as important as drag and drop. In Mate, all such drag and drop functionality that I'm aware of appears to be implemented:

1) You can drag files/folders onto a launcher either on the desktop itself or inside the file manager. 2) You can drag files/folders onto application launchers residing on the panel. 3) You can drag files/folders onto a running application. One way I use this is to enter files or folder paths into apps like meld as that's usually a lot easier than browsing to a file/folder. It's also a handy means of entering the complete path to a file/folder in the terminal. 4) You can drag files/folders from one workspace and (via the Workspace Switcher applet) drop them onto any "target" on another workspace. And if you're wanting to drop onto a window that's hidden beneath another window, just drag over the target window's "button" on the Window List applet on the panel to bring up the target window. 5) If you drag something onto a folder, there's an "open" animation that let's you know that you can do the drop. 6) You can drag text between two applications. I use this a lot to enter commands into the terminal that originate from a web page.

So, Mate passes the "drag-n-drop" test with flying colors.

And that's just drag-n-drop--there's lots of other reasons why I'm a Linux Mint/Mate fanboy!

TNFrank wrote:Been running Ubuntu 12.04LTS for about 3 months, tried other Distros but none would work as well for me. Well, the other day, in order to help out a buddy who's a Windows 7 junkie I gave Ubuntu 10.04LTS a try just to see what a Non-Unity desktop environment would look like and it actually was pretty decent. Sooooooo, I wondered what'd look like the older Gnome 2 desktop but in a newer, up to date 64 bit package and someone pointed me to Linux Mint 15 MATE. Loaded it onto a USB and took it for a little test dirve, liked it so much I just got done loading it onto my laptop and getting it configured a bit and I actually like it a lot. I think I've found a viable Ubuntu 12.04LTS replacement. Way to go Mint.

This is what happened to me as well. I had used Ubuntu on and off for awhile and just didnt like the Unity environment. I came across linux mint and have really taken to it.

I did "stray" from Mint 15 MATE for about a week after hearing about Elementary OS Luna on the Linux Action Show but I reinstalled Mint yesterday because there were just a couple things I didn't like about eOS. You couldn't do ANYTHING on the desktop, couldn't make folders or files and when you installed a USB or CD/DVD it'd not show up on the desktop either AND it was making my wife's HP/nc6400(same model I use as well) lock up when she was using Firefox. I just put Ubuntu 12.04LTS onto her laptop since she liked that Distro(she's not a Power User so the "point and click the icon" deal with Unity is perfect for her) and I'm back to Mint 15 MATE. I think I'm going to stick with it for a while this time and not be pulled astray by other Distros. I really want to just stick with what's working for me.

Indeed I have known about mint for ages but have always been an ubuntu user, I loved gnome 2 and am happy in LXDE and XFCE although prefer somthing a bit more polished, Unity on the other hand I wasn't sure about I gave it a go and soon went back to lxde, I gave it another go and stuck with it for about a year but still not happy with it.I tried an early release of gnome 3 and confused where is everything? and whats this magazine concept for a task swicher? I want a Desktop OS that works with a mouse and keyboard, not a tablet OS that only works if you have a touchscreen!

then I discovered cinnimon and have not looked back! I cant see me using anyting else for the forseeable future except whatever the default is on a rasberry pi (think its lxde but not sure) when I get one!

IIRC Raspberry Pi uses XBMC which is the old XBox code. Also, from what I've seen is can use Python as well. I'd like to get a Pi just to mess around with. Heck, $35 bucks for a computer, you just can't beat that deal IMHO.